Senator Barack Obama was in Missouri today. He delivered a speech (posted below) in Cape Girardeau, the heart of the conservative southeast section of our state. Here’s the video:

Several Missouri Republican leaders used Obama’s appearance in the state as an opportunity to slam him as a “raise-your-taxes, increase-the-bureaucracy” Democrat who is too left of Missouri values. Here’s audio from a conference call today with Lt. Governor Peter Kinder, Congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson, and Republican Chairman Doug Russell.

AUDIO: GOP Conference Call on Obama Visit

Kinder, a Cape Girardeau native, went further by releasing the following statement:

Obama’s visit to Cape Girardeau cannot hide the fact that his call for increasing taxes would hurt Missourians already struggling with out-of-control health care costs and higher gas prices. We must keep Missouri’s economy strong by keeping the government and Barack Obama out of our pocketbooks. The problem for Missourians like you and me is that Obama’s solution to every problem is bigger government, more government and higher taxes. Missourians will not accept someone who wants to increase the payroll tax and increase the capital gains tax and even increase the tax on gasoline. My friends, we do not want to go down this road!

I also remember, as many of you do, that Barack Obama told his liberal friends not too long ago in San Francisco that folks like those in Southeast Missouri were bitter and clinging to our Second Amendment rights and our religion. I am sure that Southeast Missourians will have a lot to say to Barack Obama about those elitist comments, and many other issues as well.

What I find particularly intriguing is that recently, the liberal New York Times did not tab Missouri as a bellwether state despite our knack over the last 100-plus years of picking presidents. It is my suspicion that the New York Times has concluded that a liberal like Barack Obama cannot win Missouri, and from where many of us in Southeast Missouri are sitting, they are probably right.

Here, as promised, is the text of Obama’s speech:

It’s great to be here in Missouri with my good friend Claire McCaskill. This is a state that voted for change when you sent Claire to the Senate in 2006; you voted for change in February when we surprised the pundits and pulled out a victory; and this is a state where we will compete to win when I am the Democratic nominee for President.

There is a lot of talk these days about how the Democratic Party is divided. But I’m not worried, because I know that we’ll be able to come together quickly behind a common purpose. There’s too much that unites us as Democrats. There’s too much at stake for our country. And there will be a clear choice on November 4.

Now there’s one thing we know for sure about this election. The name George Bush will not be on the ballot. The name of my cousin Dick Cheney will not be on the ballot. But while the Bush-Cheney ticket won’t be up for reelection, the Bush-Cheney policies will, because John McCain is running for four more years of the same approach that has failed the American people.

There is a reason that a record number of Americans think that we’re on the wrong track. We’ve lost hundreds of thousands of jobs just this year. The cost of everything from health care, to a tank of gas, to college tuition has skyrocketed while wages have stayed stagnant. Millions of American families are facing foreclosure. We’re spending tens of billions of dollars fighting a war that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged.

Meanwhile, Americans have lost faith that Washington can or will do anything about problems they face day in and day out. Because the troubling statistics only begin to tell a story found in communities and at kitchen tables across the country. It’s a story of empty factories shut down forever because the jobs have been shipped overseas and nothing took their place. It’s the story told by a mother who can’t sleep because she can’t afford health care for her sick child; a father who lost his job but can’t afford a tank of gas so that he can look for a new one; a family that doesn’t know where they’ll be living in a month or a year because they’re about to lose a home.

It’s a story of an American Dream that is slipping away. And what the American people need at this defining moment is leadership that restores the fundamental American belief that you can make it if you try in this country – that your dreams matter more than the demands of special interests or the convenience of political posturing. That’s why I’m running for President. That’s why we’ll be united as Democrats. Because Washington has failed the American people, and this election is our chance to turn the page.

John McCain has served his country with honor, and I respect that service. But for two decades, he has supported policies that have shifted the burden on to working people. And his only answer to the problems created by George Bush’s policies is to give them another four years to fail. Just look at where he stands and you’ll see that a vote for John McCain is a vote for George Bush’s third term.

Four more years of George Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans who don’t need them and didn’t ask for them.

Four more years of a health care plan that works for the healthy and the wealthy while tens of millions go without care, and families struggle with rising costs.

Four more years of a President who supports privatizing Social Security.

Four more years of a war that has cost us thousands of lives and a trillion dollars without making us safer, while we run up a mountain of debt that is mortgaging our children’s future.

Four more years of a White House that is run by the kind of lobbyists who run John McCain’s campaign, while Washington tells the American people – “you’re on your own.”

Well we know that the American people cannot afford any more of the Bush-McCain program. Not this time. Not when the stakes are so high. Not when the opportunities are so great. We need a new direction in Washington. We need new leadership in the White House.

We know that government cannot solve all of our problems, and we don’t expect it to. We don’t want our tax dollars wasted on programs that don’t work or perks for special interests that don’t work for us. We understand that we cannot stop every job from going overseas or build a wall around our economy, and we know we shouldn’t.

But that is not an excuse to spend another four years doing nothing to reclaim the American Dream for working people. We’re the nation that built the largest middle class in history. We all have a stake in each other’s success. We can’t continue an economic program that rewards Wall Street at the expense of Main Street because then we all end up hurting. It’s time to end a failed approach that tries to build prosperity from the top down, and renew our common prosperity from the bottom up.

Instead of a tax code that rewards wealth and not work, we’ll provide an income tax cut of up to $1,000 for a working family, and eliminate income taxes altogether for any retiree making less than $50,000 per year.

Instead of more inaction on health care, we’ll finally bring this country together, stand up to the drug companies and insurance companies, and make health care affordable and accessible for every single American.

Instead of putting a secure retirement at risk, we’ll safeguard Social Security, we’ll protect pensions instead of CEO bonuses, and we’ll help all Americans save more so they can have a retirement that is dignified and secure.

Instead of gimmicks like a gas tax holiday that rewards the oil companies while doing nothing to lower gas prices in the long-term, we’ll raise fuel efficiency standards, invest in alternative energy, and create millions of Green Jobs that will free this country from our addiction to oil.

Instead of a blank check to fight an endless war in Iraq, we can end this war, restore our military, finish the fight against al Qaeada, and invest some of those dollars to put millions of Americans to work rebuilding our roads and bridges, laying down new rail lines and new broadband, and making sure that all of America can compete and win in the 21st century.

That’s the new direction we need in this country. The other party has already decided to run on the failed policies of the past; that’s why we need to be the party that stands for the future. Everywhere I go, I meet Americans who can’t wait another day for change. Change that refuses to let lobbyists drown out the voices of the American people.. Change that puts folks back to work. Change that finally delivers on the promise of health care you can afford, and an energy policy that makes sense. Change that leaves behind partisanship that stands in the way of progress, because we’re all in this together as Americans.

This is our chance to build a new majority of Democrats and Independents and Republicans who know that four more years of George Bush just won’t do. This is our moment to turn the page on the divisions and distractions that pass for politics in Washington, so that we can write the next chapter in the history of American prosperity for all Americans.

Speaking Saturday at the Missouri Democratic Convention in Columbia, former Congressman Richard Gephardt called President George W. Bush “clueless” and the “worst President ever.”

During a Obama campaign conference call with reporters yesterday, Senator Claire McCaskill said it would be “inappropriate and awkard and wrong for any of us to tell Senator Clinton when it is time for the race to be over.”

She said the decision is Clinton’s alone.

Here’s the complete conference call (McCaskill’s comments are around -18:00):

Also featured on the call was Senator John Kerry, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, and Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.

Here is the Clinton campaign’s conference call also from Wednesday:

It is now almost certain that Barack Obama will win a majority of the pledged delegates. And even after Obama having the absolute most difficult month of his campaign, Hillary Clinton was still unable to score a decisive win. In order to give the Democrats their best shot at winning in November, and to finally shift their attention to the Republican nominee, John McCain, do you think it’s time for Hillary Clinton to drop out of this race?

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WATCH OBAMA’S NORTH CAROLINA VICTORY SPEECH:

WATCH CLINTON’S SPEECH IN INDIANA:

TUESDAY, MAY 6 - ELECTION DAY!

Obama is scheduled to speak here in the Reynolds Coliseum on the campus of North Carolina State University tonight around 9:00. They’ve set up his podium on one end of the basketball court. Around half-court is the riser set-up for TV networks. The back court is filled with dozens of tables for up laptop reporters.

TUESDAY, MAY 6 - ELECTION DAY!

Clinton is running commercials on North Carolina TV featuring poet and author Maya Angelou. In the ad, Angelou, who is black, says she believes she has found “the best person to be President of the United States.”

TUESDAY, MAY 6 - ELECTION DAY!

In Bill Clinton’s speech last night in Raleigh, he once again suggested Barack Obama can’t win the November general election.

Watch the full speech here:

MONDAY, MAY 5

Bill Clinton hit 11 towns in North Carolina today while his wife is in Indiana. We’re going to try to catch up with him tonight in Raleigh.

Barack Obama was in Durham today at CREE Inc, a manufacturer of semiconductors used for green lighting. Here’s some video:

SUNDAY, MAY 4

If Barack Obama wins the North Carolina primary Tuesday, it will not be a small feat historically. The headline of the local paper tells the story: “Race Still Influences Voters, Poll Finds”. The article gives some context:

Racial issues have shaped North Carolina politics since the Reconstruction era. In 1880, The New York Times detailed county-by-county violations of white Democrats keeping black Republicans from voting. In Wilmington in 1898, whites rioted and forced blacks from their homes after a local election, the only known political coup in U.S. history.

In more recent years, former Gov. Terry Sanford lost the Tar Heel Democratic presidential primary in 1972 to Alabama Gov. George Wallace, a segregationist who made his name fighting school integration.

And then there was the Harvey Gantt/Jesse Helms U.S. Senate race of 1990. Helms, the Republican incumbent, was in a close race with Gantt, Charlotte’s first black mayor, until airing a last-minute ad that showed a pair of white hands crumpling a rejection letter and blaming the job loss on affirmative action.

On the current TV ads (see below):

In the Democratic gubernatorial race, state treasurer Richard Moore linked Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue to the Ku Klux Klan in advertisements.

The N.C. Republican party aired commercials tying both Perdue and Moore to the Rev. Wright despite requests from McCain and the national Republican establishment to hold its fire.

“Although both parties claim they don’t, they have racial overtones,” Bacot said of the ads.

From the mouths of North Carolina voters:

Greg Gallagher, 52, a construction worker who lives in Pamlico County, was so uncomfortable hearing about Obama’s pastor that he worries about the candidate himself.

“The more I know, the less I like him,” said Gallagher, who is white. “You listen to this guy — it’s not going to pull people together. It’ll break them apart.”

Bev Barksdale, 48, a bartender in Oriental who worries most about health care, said she e-mailed Clinton last week advising the senator that black voters in Eastern North Carolina will come out for Obama.

“I said, ‘You need to come further east.’ In the counties, people are uninformed, uneducated and black,” said Barksdale, who is white. “I’m not a racist, but I think a lot of black people are coming out to vote because of the race issue.”

Like Gallagher, she would vote for McCain or not at all before casting a ballot for Obama. She said he has too little experience, and she doesn’t think he’s willing to pledge allegiance to the flag.

“That is huge to me,” she said. (Obama has led the pledge in the U.S. Senate.)

In Kinston, Daniel Adams, a 30-year-old scientist, recently switched his registration from Republican to Democrat (”It’s like someone who’s just finished AA,” he said jokingly.)

A native of Eastern North Carolina who has lived and worked abroad, Adams has grown used to — if frustrated by — the racism he hears from extended family. They always vote white, he said.

“I think race always plays into decisions, especially with politics, especially in the South,” said Adams, who is white. He wanted to break that mold. And so for the longest time, Adams liked Obama’s idealism.

“I once thought he could change the country,” said Adams.

But he has lost some faith in Obama now, wondering how the man could sit for 20 years in Wright’s pews. Adams will vote for Clinton in the primary.

SUNDAY, MAY 4

Entering the final 48 hours before the important North Carolina and Indiana primaries on Tuesday.

Here is the negative ad being run by the North Carolina Republican Party. It is officially attacking the Democratic candidates for governor, but the real target seems to be Barack Obama. The ad is running now. It seems like the NCGOP would prefer if Hillary Clinton won the Democratic primary.

SATURDAY, MAY 3

Three days before Election Day, there were already lines today outside of polling places in North Carolina.

North Carolina has what they call “One-Stop Early Voting”, meaning a resident who is qualified to register to vote may register In-Person and vote at a One-Stop Site in the person’s county of residence during the One-Stop Absentee Voting period. The One-Stop Voting period extends from 19 to 3 days before Election Day. Today was the last day before Tuesday’s actual Election Day.

In Greensboro today, lines spilled outside of the polling place located in a recreation center in a park. The park was scheduled to be the site of a rally and barbeque featuring Hip-Hop artist and actor Mos Def, an Obama supporter, but organizers informed us that Mos Def missed his flight and was unable to attend. But that didn’t stop throngs of college students from still coming out to vote today.

FRIDAY, MAY 2

We’re heading to North Carolina for the days leading up to the important Democratic primary this Tuesday between Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.